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This Week in Digital Strategy 11.15.13

Happy Friday, everyone! So you probably didn't get a chance to turn down a $3 billion offer like SnapChat did to Facebook this week. There were still many thought-provoking insights in the world of digital strategy to make up for it. We rounded up five social media marketing trends for you to think about in your 2014 marketing plan, and etiquette tips for a successful Google Plus strategy. We also recapped our SMACdown event at this year’s FutureM conference with key takeaways on how the SMAC Stack can increase your organizations productivity. Finally, we explore the NBA’s new YouTube video and see how it turned into a viral piece of content.

2013 is almost over and it is time to revisit your marketing strategy for the upcoming year. There have been some huge developments in social media in the past year. Social Media Today has rounded up five social media marketing trends that need to be on every marketer’s radar. One of the trends include Twitter being a more utilized platform than Facebook. Check out the rest of the trends covered in the link above.

With its 1.18 billion users, of which close to 58% are active daily, with an average of 20 minutes per day, Facebook is certainly not disappearing anytime soon. Outside emerging markets where growth is still happening, Facebook has reached a certain plateau, with even some decreases within the younger generations, in particular the 13-17 teens. For brands, in particular small & medium businesses (SMB), it’s getting increasingly difficult to master the platform and gain a vibrant community without spending some efforts and allocating substantial efforts, both in time and money.

Ayantek brought a lot of excitement to this year’s FutureM conference. We have rounded up the key takeaways from the event. Be sure to check out our blog for upcoming video recaps of our SMACdown event.

As the emcee at Ayantek’s SMACdown event at the 2013 FutureM Conference, my role was to set the stage for the SMACdown where two teams of marketing and technology experts in boxing robes were presenting their perspective on the SMAC Stack. The “Marketing Mavericks” team responded to a challenge from BJ’s Wholesale Club and the “Digital Dynamos” presented a solution for a challenge from iRobot Corporation. Through these two business challenges, each team demonstrated that Social, Mobile, Analytics, and Cloud (SMAC) technologies when adopted in a combined and holistic manner can exponentially increase business productivity and deliver superior user engagement.

The NBA uses the ‘Wow’ factor in YouTube video to build awareness

It is always easy when your employees can dunk, right? To gear up for the NBA’s slate of games on Christmas day, NBA players from popular teams participated in a YouTube video. Each player is shown shooting into a net covered in bells. Each of the players make the basket and replicate the song “Jingle Bells” with each swish. The ‘Wow’ factor in what makes this a highly shareable piece of content. The video which was released yesterday was all over the internet and has over 2 million YouTube views. When you watch this video you can’t help but think, “how did they do that?” Then you proceed to press the replay button. The video’s length of 34 seconds made this a video that people did not have to put a large amount of time into watching. Length and the ‘Wow’ factor are two ways to get your content shared across all platforms.

Google Plus is an underutilized social media platforms for many marketers. That does not mean that etiquette goes out the window just because of limited engagement. This platform is still a great way to generate leads. In this article, proper etiquette is discussed on how to build relationships on this social media channel.

Google Plus is a social platform that has changed the way marketing is done on social media. In any social media site, there are certain rules that you need to follow in order to be accepted socially by other people. Yes, some social psychology is needed in order to attain the trust and attention of people before they will interact with you. Google Plus is no different, and if you’re not living by the G+ etiquette code, then you’re missing your opportunity to be influential on this platform. Google Plus is a little different from the other social sites because it can be used as a micro-blogging platform as well. That’s why I can’t understand why people will share something, and in the description say, “Check this out”, and publish the update for the world to see.

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